New Species Of Shark Found In Fish Market

Another week, another new shark species! While many can believe that scientists find new species in the ocean, swimming around freely… that isn’t always the case. In fact, it is rarely the case. The place where most researchers find new species is in fish markets.

The discovery of this shark goes back a little more than a decade now. A never-before-seen shark species was brought to the fishing harbor in Kochi (also known as Cochin), a city in southwest India's coastal Kerala state. The fishermen who brought in this odd-looking species were fishing for sharks of economic importance from the deep-sea in the Indian Ocean. Uninterested in the two-foot-long animal, they tossed it aside and gave it no further thought until researchers from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) came to the fishing harbor for observations of the landings.

The scientists were interested in the creature, a deep-sea shark specimen found in the inky depths of about 200-1000 meters. Similar-looking animals had been seen only a handful of more times in the north-western Indian Ocean and the Maldives. Storing the unusual animal at CMFRI, it wasn’t until a decade later that the same critter was caught off Trincomalee in Sri Lanka. Scientists from the USA, India, and Germany decided to collaborate to figure out what exactly this fish was.

The first thing the researchers found was that the similar-looking shark specimen that was found in the waters around Socotra Island was not like the two specimens from Kochi and Sri Lanka! It turns out that this specimen is part of the same genus, and is called Planonasus parini. The sharks from Kochi and Sri Lanka were the same shark and are part of the shark family Pseudotriakidae. The new shark was named Planonasus indicus, indicus being a nod to it being found in the Indian Ocean. The research team were not able access any samples of the sharks from the Maldives, but believe they are also Planonasus indicus. This new species is dark brown-black in color, and has a flat-soft nose (that’s where the name Planonasus comes from).

In the published findings in the journal Marine Biodiversity, the scientists state that “the species appears to be rare and opportunities to obtain additional material are extremely limited.”

There are about 88 species of sharks that call Indian waters home, and this newest addition is just one of them! Deep-sea sharks are especially hard to study, because this is an environment full of extremes such as crushing pressure, near-freezing temperatures, and total darkness. Exploring the deep sea tends to be costly. “India’s only deep-sea fishery survey vessel is FORV [Fishery Oceanographic Research Vessel] Sagar Sampada,” said K.V. Akhilesh, a scientist at CMFRI told Mongabay. “The vessel was bought in 1984 and it is time now to acquire new high-class vessels. Additionally, getting a confirmed research survey berth is quite tough as many institutions are requesting for the same.” But exploring the deep-sea is not easy even if you get a research vessel. In a previous Forbes article, Katy Croff Bell from the MIT Media Lab commented: “Traditionally, you need a large ship, multi-million-dollar robotic vehicles, and very few countries in the world have those kinds of resources to explore (e.g. US, UK, Japan, France, Greece). Additionally, the countries that have not ‘grown-up’ developing the capabilities themselves for deep sea exploration don’t have the knowledge to do so. […] So even if you dropped a research vessel in Kiribati, a local wouldn’t necessarily know if they’d discovered a new deep sea coral because they’ve never seen a deep sea coral in the first place. A lot of learning needs to happen to bridge that gap.”

Docked fishing boats. Thomas Vuillemin/Unsplash

Researchers don’t need to rely on expensive boats to discover new species, as this latest discovery just proved. One other way to find new deep-sea animals is through fisheries and their catch (both intended and bycatch). While the thought of pouring through hundreds of dead fish does not sound appealing to some, researchers rely on this method to study the deep sea in a way that is cost-effective and fairly easy in regards to logistics. As fisheries continue to expand, India’s commercial fishery is monitored by the CMFRI and allows scientists to uncover mysteries otherwise cloaked in darkness and depth.

But just because species are being monitored doesn’t mean they are always protected. “Several Indian shark species, such as river shark, sawfish, shovelnose ray, etc. have gone missing or appear in reduced numbers in regular monitoring programs. These were once very common along the country’s coastal waters,” Akhilesh said. The expansion of fisheries means increased pressure to the fish that call those waters home. Sharks, particularly because of how slow they are to mature and their low rates of population growth, are heavily threatened by overfishing. The fisheries doesn’t even have to be targeting a specific species to impact it! In both instances Planonasus indicus was caught (in India and Sri Lanka), it was caught by fishing vessels looking for a different species of deep-sea sharks. Gulper sharks (Centrophorus granulosus) belong to the Centrophoridae family and are commonly sought out for their oily livers and meat.

The Indian Ocean holds many secrets under her watery waves, and scientists are trying to study the animals that call her home before they disappear in the wild. Hopefully researchers in this area can obtain more specimens of Planonasus indicus for future studies… and hopefully we see them before another decade passes!

You can follow me on Twitter @mcmsharksxx and learn more about my research here. Read my Forbes blog here.

I’m a Latina marine biologist and conservationist who studies Chondrichthyans (sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras). I’m the founder of The Fins United Initiative, a program that teaches you about diverse sharks and the people who study them! You may have seen me on Shark W...